


It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment

by CammienRay, RosieTwiggs



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mind Games, Psychological Trauma, psychiatric hospital
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 12:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1226872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CammienRay/pseuds/CammienRay, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosieTwiggs/pseuds/RosieTwiggs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Felicity Smoak is not real. She was just a hallucination I had after the island. I’ve never met anyone by that name."</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment

**Author's Note:**

> So this was a joint effort fic, after CammienRay "innocently" suggested - What if Felicity was a figment of Oliver's imagination.
> 
> Story title from "One Hundred Years of Solitude".

"Mrs. Queen, you  _do_  understand that your son suffered a  _severe_ psychological break after the earthquake, correct?”

Moira Queen narrowed her eyes at Dr. Schaeffer, the psychiatrist on her left, before turning back to watch her son through the plated glass. He had lost so much weight. He was thinner than he had been when he returned from China, but he still retained that stillness - that awareness that had struck her so upon seeing him again he first time.

"Coupled with the previous traumas he must have endured on the island, the damage to his psyche has been, well, immense. I really must argue against his release."

This time Moira didn’t even spare the man a glance. “Well, I must _insist_. We are fully capable of caring for him at the manor. I think he’s spent enough time here, and it is far past the time he should come home. As you said, he spent five years on an island, away from those who love him. I won’t condemn him to another lonely existence in this _hospital_.” The final word she spat with contempt, and Dr. Schaeffer looked affronted.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Queen, but-"

"No," Moira responded with finality. "We’re done." 

She signaled to the bodyguard that had accompanied her as the doctor unlocked Oliver’s door, and he followed her inside.

"Oliver?" she questioned softly, and her son looked up, eyes clear, and smiled.

"Mom, hi." He stood and reached for her, pulling her into a hug. Moira shut her eyes, letting herself sink into her son’s embrace. She pulled away after a moment, reaching up to run her hand down his face. "We’re taking you home, sweetheart."

Oliver nodded, looking up at the bodyguard.

"You remember Mr. Diggle, yes?"

Oliver nodded. “Of course.”

"Excellent. You’re things have all been prepared, and we can leave as soon as I sign a few last papers. Mr. Diggle will stay with you in the meanwhile."

She turned to leave, heels clicking loudly on the marble floors, quick, efficient, setting a pace the doctor scrambled to keep up with.

They had barely reached the end of the hall when a loud ruckus drew her attention back in time to see several orderlies rushing into her son’s room. Moira turned immediately, running back down the hallway.

"No!  _No!_ " she could hear her son shouting from inside.

"No, you’re  _lying_! You have to  _listen to me!_ ”

She rushed into the room, to find Mr. Diggle attempting to hold Oliver as he flailed, eyes wide in a panic. “You’re lying!” He screamed, kicking back with such force that his legs lifted off the ground. Diggle held him tightly, arms banded around her son’s middle.

"What happened?!" 

"He asked me about some girl I didn’t know, and he lost it!" Mr. Diggle responded, clenching his jaw with the effort of keeping Oliver from punching the orderlies and nurses now crowding around him.

"Felicity!" Oliver yelled. "Felicity Smoak! You  _do_  know her! Diggle! _WHERE IS SHE?_ ”

Moira shook her head, eyes tearing. 

Dr. Schaeffer rushed in, syringe in hand.

"Mrs. Queen, you need to step outside!"

"No, I-"

“ _Get her out of here!_ " he yelled, and one of the nurses ushered her out.

She watched in horror as Oliver continued to flail, knocking the syringe from the doctor’s hand.

"Diggle, let me go! We have to find her!  _I_  have to find her!  _FELICITY!!!_ " he roared, and the hallway echoed with it.

The doctor finally managed to inject Oliver, and the effect was immediate. Her son continued to struggle for a few more moments, but then his eyelids began to fall shut, fluttering, and his movements became sluggish, labored. 

The crease in his brow, however, remained.

"No," he mumbled, with one last haphazard attempt at escape, as Mr. Diggle lowered him down onto the bed.

“ _No_ , she’s real. Felicity. _Please_.  _Felicity_ …”

Moira held her hand up to her mouth, eyes wide as she took everything in. Her heart ached for her son, more so now at the realization that he wouldn’t be coming home just yet.

She blinked the tears from her eyes and shook her head. No. She was determined. She would find a way to bring her son back home.

They would get through to him and he would come home.

~*~

They told him eye contact was important. 

"Not too much, or they’ll think you are lying, but just enough so they know you believe what you are saying."

Both of his lawyers told him this so he believed them. 

He made eye contact when assorted members of various legal teams came in and out and took him to various meetings, hearings, proceedings. He made eye contact with his mother, which would have undone him if she had not had so much pity in her her shaky but formidable smile. 

"Now, Mr. Queen, who is Felicity Smoak?" Not much shakes the calm demeanor of a man who routinely performs psych evaluations of patients in Starling City’s maximum security facilities for mental rehabilitation. This question did.

Oliver’s lips separated, a shallow breath exiting. 

_"This is Felicity Smoak. She’s my friend."_

_"I need a girl Wednesday."_

_"You’re not my employee; you’re my partner."_

"She’s nobody." Two words, aloud. The small man across the metal table with the clipboard did not reply. He wanted more. 

Oliver straightened his back. He held his trigger fingers still. He did not clench his jaw. He continued:

"Felicity Smoak is not real. She was just a hallucination I had after the island. I’ve never met anyone by that name."

Soft scratching of pen on paper. The doctor did not look up before asking: 

"And do you still see her - these hallucinations?"

He flattened his palms on the table so he wouldn’t feel her shoulders beneath them. 

He blocked out the sound in his ears of her screams echoing with intercom static, mingling with the sound of buildings collapsing.

He took a breath and pretended he couldn’t smell a mix of citrus and honeysuckle from her shampoo. 

He stared at the doctor and didn’t imagine every detail of where her brown roots blended into blonde hair, the way her collarbones caught the light when she’d toss back her head in frustration, the way her fingers would twitch when she thought hard, typing on an imaginary keyboard, the bright pink lips...

One night a while back he realized he couldn’t remember what her eyes looked like anymore. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to see them, but the only image he had was of his face reflected in her glasses. 

"No." 

~*~

He knew they were watching him. They were always watching him. Waiting for him to crack, to show that he wasn’t the picture of successful rehabilitation he had presented.

So he stayed quiet, despite the itch he got in his fingers every time he thought of her. Despite the ache in his left shoulder where he had the scar from a bullet she apparently hadn’t helped stitch up. Despite the lump in his throat whenever he remembered a blonde head, tilted to the side, lips pursed, demanding he take her seriously.

Oliver waited weeks, and never said a word, until Moira and the doctors decided he was well enough to go out in public. 

That morning, he dressed methodically. Crisp, white linen shirt, pressed suit, tie. He looked like a CEO when he caught his reflection in the mirror, despite having been told time and again that he had never run Queen Consolidated. That had been a construct of his own mind, along with - 

He joined his mother in the town car. If she was surprised, or impressed by his appearance, she didn’t say anything, John Diggle was driving them. He liked John. 

He liked  _this_  version of John less, though. He knew this John would take a bullet for him as certainly as the other one would have, but the Diggle of his mind would have been doing it for a brother, not out of duty.

Queen Consolidated was like a rock. Steady, unchanging. He found the familiarity comforting, despite the difference in layout to his mother’s office. His desk was in a different place. The sofas were leather, and a different color. There were no bagels in the conference room.

At some point he excused himself to go to the men’s room and slipped into the executive elevator instead. He traveled down eighteen floors, and the doors opened in to the IT department. 

He walked down the hall, refusing to rush, even now making sure each step, each look, was calculating, refusing to appear eager in any way.

But he hesitated in front of her door. He couldn’t help it. Everyone had told him, time and again, that she didn’t exist. Eventually, Oliver had realized that he’d never find her again if he didn’t play along, but he couldn’t believe that the image in his mind, the reality of  _her_ , was fabricated. They might as well have been telling him the sun wasn’t real.

Taking a deep breath, heart beating frantically in his chest, Oliver knocked and opened the door.

It was a storage closet.

He was standing in a storage closet.

"Um, sir? Can I help you?"

Oliver’s hands shook as he took in office supplies, stacks of printer paper, wire cables and boxes of CDs.

It was a storage closet.

A hand touched his shoulder and he flinched. The person behind him immediately shuffled back and Oliver shut his eyes tightly. He needed to get control of himself. He took several deep breaths and then turned to find a short woman with black hair looking at him worriedly.

"I’m fine," he said, clearing his throat. "Just looking for a pencil."

The woman frowned, but finally nodded and went on her way. Oliver felt his throat constricting, and knew he was on the edge. He needed to get a grip or he’d be back to pills and restraints and regular sedation.

He turned to close the door, but as he did, something caught his eye. There, on the shelf to his right, something glinted silver. He stepped forward, picking it up, and his vision swam for a moment. He gripped the shelf to steady himself, staring at the item in shock.

It was an industrial earring.

It was  _her_  industrial earring.

Somewhere in an underground lab, Oliver Queen’s EEG spiked. A flurry of activity followed, as fluids were replaced, several drugs were administered, and vitals were checked.

"What’s going on?" a heavily accented voice asked, right hand clenched as he watched through the window.

"I don’t know sir. It seems as though his body is breaking down the hallucinogen."

"Well, give him more, then."

"It won’t help, sir. We can keep him under for a week, maybe two longer, but eventually, he’s going to wake up. Whatever reality the drugs created for him, his mind’s started to break it apart.

"He’s found a link back to reality."

~*~

Sometimes, years later, he would feel the sudden panic in his stomach, his chest, his throat. At first it happened several times a day, then just once a week or so, then even less frequently, only when certain triggers happened. The trigger could be anything - her glasses not in their usual place on their bedside table. Seeing her chair momentarily empty if she left the room when he wasn’t looking. Any absence of her, really. Decades passed, but the fear and confusion could still overtake his mind like that very first day. 

His heart would pound and the sweat would build and he’d scream her name and she’d come running, she’d hold his head in her lap, she’d run her fingers through his hair, she’d calmly speak to him, telling him anything - she’s here, she’s real, she’s not leaving…

He’d stop heaving, his heartbeat would slow, and he’d be okay, until the next time. 

 


End file.
